1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to methods and systems for providing business continuity services. More particularly, the invention relates to methods and systems for accessing, replicating, and storing customer data, and using the stored data to create fully recovered systems, applications and networks in the event of a disaster.
2. General Background
As computers' ability to process and store data improves and their prices drop, many companies today use computers in their businesses. At one end of the spectrum, even manual labor companies often use computers for order taking and invoicing. At the other end of this spectrum are internet businesses that exist solely on servers. In either scenario, access to data is key to the business's continuation.
Many back up solutions exist for computer users. These solutions often back up the user's data to an external hard drive or tape drive that is located at the user's place of business. In the event of a fire or a natural disaster, the user still loses that data. Other back up solutions include backing up the user's data to an online-based server. Online-based back up can mitigate the problem of complete data loss found in the first scenario. However, an online-based back up still includes problems because there may still be delays in the time it takes a business to function again. This problem remains because in the event of a fire or natural disaster, the software that uses the data may also be lost if the computer equipment is lost. Thus, the user must repurchase or otherwise obtain its software and computer equipment before it can make use of the data that can be recovered via the online-based back up.
Another problem with current back up and recovery solutions is that existing solutions required a significant amount of human input. Often someone must start the back up or at least schedule the back up and confirm that it occurred. This is particularly troublesome because existing back up and recovery solutions are overly complex, costly, and require specialization in hardware, software and skill sets.
Thus, a business continuity solution is needed that provides back up and recovery of computing services and eliminates the above-referenced challenges.